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Francis Beaumont
Francis Beaumont (1584 - 6 March 1616) was an English poet and a playwright in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher. Although today Beaumont is remembered as a dramatist, during his lifetime he was also celebrated as a poet. Life Youth Beaumont was born at the family seat of Grace Dieu, near Thringstone in Leicestershire, the third son of Sir Francis Beaumont, a justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and Anne (Pierrepoint). Poet and baronet Sir John Beaumont was his older brother. Francis Beaumont was admitted to Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College, Oxford) at age 13. Following the death of his father in 1598, he left university without a degree and followed in his father's footsteps by entering the Inner Temple in London in 1600. Accounts suggest that Beaumont did not work long as a lawyer. He became a student of poet and playwright Ben Jonson; he was also acquainted with Michael Drayton and other poets and dramatists, and decided that was where his passion lay. His first work, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, appeared in 1602. The 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica describes the work as "not on the whole discreditable to a lad of eighteen, fresh from the popular love-poems of Marlowe and Shakespeare, which it naturally exceeds in long-winded and fantastic diffusion of episodes and conceits." In 1605, Beaumont wrote commendatory verses to Jonson's Volpone. Beaumont and Fletcher Beaumont's collaboration with Fletcher may have begun as early as 1605. They had both hit an obstacle early in their dramatic careers with notable failures; Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle, first performed by the Children of the Blackfriars in 1607, was rejected by an audience who, the publisher's epistle to the 1613 quarto claims, failed to note "the privie mark of irony about it;" that is, they took Beaumont's satire of old-fashioned drama as an old-fashioned drama. The play received a lukewarm reception. The following year, Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess failed on the same stage. In 1609, however, the two collaborated on Philaster, which was performed by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre and at Blackfriars. The play was a popular success, not only launching the careers of the two playwrights but also sparking a new taste for tragicomedy. According to a mid-century anecdote related by John Aubrey, they lived in the same house on the Bankside in Southwark, "sharing everything in the closest intimacy." Family and later life About 1613 Beaumont married Ursula Isley, daughter and co-heiress of Henry Isley of Sundridge in Kent, by whom he had two daughters, one posthumous. He had a stroke between February and October of 1613, after which he wrote no more plays, but was able to write an elegy for Lady Penelope Clifton, who died 26 October 1613.Finkelpearl, Philip J. Court and Country Politics in the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990, pp. 41-42, 255-58. Writing , one of Beaumont and John Fletcher's early collaborations.|thumb|right|200px]] It was once written of Beaumont and Fletcher that "in their joint plays their talents are so ... completely merged into one, that the hand of Beaumont cannot clearly be distinguished from that of Fletcher." Yet this romantic notion did not stand up to critical examination. In the 17th century, Sir Aston Cockayne, a friend of Fletcher's, specified that there were many plays in the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher folio that contained nothing of Beaumont's work, but rather featured the writing of Philip Massinger. 19th- and 20th-century critics like E.H.C. Oliphant subjected the plays to a self-consciously literary, and often subjective and impressionistic, reading – but nonetheless began to differentiate the hands of the collaborators. This study was carried much farther, and onto a more objective footing, by 20th-century scholars, especially Cyrus Hoy. Short of absolute certainty, a critical consensus has evolved on many plays in the canon of Fletcher and his collaborators; in regard to Beaumont, the schema below is among the least controversial that has been drawn. By Beaumont alone: *''The Knight of the Burning Pestle,'' comedy (performed 1607; printed 1613) *''The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn,'' masque (performed 20 February 1613; printed 1613?) With Fletcher: *''The Woman Hater,'' comedy (1606; 1607) *''Cupid's Revenge,'' tragedy (c. 1607–12; 1615) *''Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding,'' tragicomedy (c. 1609; 1620) *''The Maid's Tragedy,'' tragedy (c. 1609; 1619) *''A King and No King,'' tragicomedy (1611; 1619) *''The Captain,'' comedy (c. 1609–12; 1647) *''The Scornful Lady,'' comedy (ca. 1613; 1616) *''Love's Pilgrimage,'' tragicomedy (c. 1615–16; 1647) *''The Noble Gentleman,'' comedy (licensed 3 February 1626; 1647) Beaumont/Fletcher plays, later revised by Massinger: *''Thierry and Theodoret,'' tragedy (c. 1607?; 1621) *''The Coxcomb,'' comedy (c. 1608–10; 1647) *''Beggars' Bush,'' comedy (c. 1612–13?; revised 1622?; 1647) *''Love's Cure,'' comedy (c. 1612–13?; revised 1625?; 1647) Because of Fletcher's highly distinctive and personal pattern of linguistic preferences and contractional forms (ye for you, em for them, etc.), his hand can be distinguished fairly easily from Beaumont's in their collaborations. In A King and No King, for example, Beaumont wrote all of Acts I, II, and III, plus scenes IV.iv and V.ii and iv; Fletcher wrote only the first three scenes in Act IV (IV,i-iii) and the first and third scenes in Act V (V,i and iii) — so that the play is more Beaumont's than Fletcher's. The same is true of The Woman Hater, The Maid's Tragedy, The Noble Gentleman, and Philaster. On the other hand, Cupid's Revenge, The Coxcomb, The Scornful Lady, Beggar's Bush, and The Captain are more Fletcher's than Beaumont's. In Love's Cure and Thierry and Theodoret, the influence of Massinger's revision complicates matters; but in those plays too, Fletcher appears to be the majority contributor, Beaumont the minority. Critical introduction by Andrew Cecil Bradley Coleridge wished that Beaumont and Fletcher had written poems instead of tragedies. It was a bold wish, though not an unfriendly one; but perhaps we should be readier to echo it if Coleridge had spoken of lyrics rather than of poems generally. The longer poems of Beaumont which remain to us are, on the whole, not remarkable. He composed a free paraphrase of Ovid’s Remedia Amoris. Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, printed as early as 1602, when he was probably seventeen years old, is noteworthy chiefly on that account. In this poem, written in the same metre as Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, and founded on a passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, there is plenty of luxuriance and facility, but also a superabundance of mere voluptuous description and of frigid conceits. Some of Beaumont’s memorial poems are marked by an almost incredible want of taste. But the case is very different with the letter to Ben Jonson, in which "their merry meetings at the Mermaid" are described with great animation and doubtless with truth.... The great lines "On the Tombs in Westminster" are written in the common rhyming couplets of four accents which have been so plentifully and so variously used in English poetry. It was a favourite metre of Fletcher’s too, and it is interesting to compare the difference of its effect in the hands of the two poets. There is a grave strength in Beaumont’s verse, and a concentrated vigour of imagination in such lines as : ‘Here are sands, ignoble things, :Dropt from the ruin’d sides of kings,’ which hardly belongs to Fletcher’s lighter nature.from Andrew Cecil Bradley, "Critical Introduction: Francis Beaumont (1584–1616) and John Fletcher (1579–1625)," The English Poets: Selections with critical introductions (edited by Thomas Humphry Ward). New York & London: Macmillan, 1880-1918. Web, Apr. 9, 2016. Recognition Beaumont was buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. His grave is unmarked, but his name was carved onto Abraham Cowley' grave in the 19th century.Francis and John Beaumont, People, History, Westminster Abbey. Web, July 11, 2016. His poem "On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900."On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey". Arthur Quiller-Couch, editor, Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1919). Bartleby.com, Web, May 4, 2012. Publications Collected editions *''The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher'' (introduction & notes by Henry Weber). (14 volumes), Edinburgh: Printed by James Ballantyne for F.C. & J. Rivington et al, 1812.The works of Beaumont and Fletcher. With an introd. and explanatory notes by Henry Weber (1812), Internet Archive. Web, June 21, 2013. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, Volume IV, Volume V, Volume VI, Volume VII, Volume VIII, Volume IX, Volume X, Volume XI, Volume XII, Volume XIII, Volume XIV. *''The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher'' (edited by A.R. Waller). (10 volumes), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1905-1906; New York: Octagon Press, 1969.The works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (1905), Internet Archive. Web, June 21, 2013. Volume I, Volume II,Volume III, Volume IV, Volume V, Volume VI, Volume VII, Volume VIII, Volume IX, Volume X. See also *List of British poets *List of English-language playwrights References * *Fletcher, Ian. Beaumont and Fletcher. London, Longmans, Green, 1967. *Hoy, Cyrus. "The Shares of Fletcher and His Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon." Studies in Bibliography. Seven parts: vols. 8,9,11-15 (1956–62). *Oliphant, Ernest Henry Clark. The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: An Attempt to Determine Their Respective Shares and the Shares of Others. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1927. *Smith, Denzell S. "Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher." In: Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith, eds., The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama, Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1978. Notes External links ;Poems *"Upon Master Edmund Spencer the Famous Poet" * "On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey". *Selected Poetry of Francis Beaumont (ca. 1584-1616) ("Lay a garland on my hearse") at Representative Poetry Online * Francis Beaumont at PoemHunter (25 poems) *Francis Beaumont at Poetry Nook (44 poems) ;Books * ;About *Francis Beaumont in the Encyclopædia Britannica *Francis Beaumont at NNDB *Francis Beaumont (1584ca.-1616) at English Poetry, 1579-1830 *Francis Beaumont at Luminarium. * Original article is at Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher Category:English Renaissance dramatists Category:Alumni of Pembroke College, Oxford Category:People of the Tudor period Category:LGBT people from England Category:1584 births Category:1616 deaths Category:People from Coalville Category:16th-century English people Category:17th-century English people Category:17th-century writers Category:English dramatists and playwrights Category:17th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets